quality of prenatal care performance on the basis of existing care standards in health centers

ABSTRACT

Prenatal care is a kind of comprehensive care program in pregnancy period that must begin in preconception. This cares have excellent effect on pregnancy outcomes and mothers and newborns' health promotion. By considering these effects more studies have been carried out for inventing and spreading provider centers of prenatal cares. There is more information about the quantity spreading of prenatal care but there isn't enough information about its quality performance. This approach was conducted to assess the quality of prenatal care [pre-conception and pregnancy] on the existing care standards in Semnan health centers. This descriptive study was performed on 95 women who delivered from March 2002 through September 2002 and their prenatal cares were received by Semnan health centers. The measurement device was a checklist consisting of four sections that used confirming validity and reliability. Data collection was carried out healthy files and telephonic interview. In this study was six indicators were used to evaluate the quality of pre-natal care. Only 11.6% of women received preconception counseling; 46% of them benefited their prenatal care in the first trimester of pregnancy, the mean of care numbers was 9 times. Prenatal care include of 49.5% via history information, 19.55% midwifery examinations, 47.2% in physical examinations and 72.2% in laboratory tests which were presented in the first prenatal care visit. On average, 87.3% of women received recommended components of prenatal care in subsequent visits and 46.4% of educations cases were presented. This study showed that the qualities of prenatal cares was not completely desirable in health centers, therefore effective steps must be taken to improve the quality of prenatal cares